Chinese supreme court upholds VMI trade secret ruling against Safe-Run

Beijing – China’s Supreme People’s Court has upheld a first instance judgment in favour of Dutch machinery maker VMI in a technical trade secret infringement case against Safe-Run.

In a statement released earlier this month, VMI said the court ruling ‘reaffirmed’ that Safe-Run infringed VMI’s trade secrets relating to “multiple aspects of tire building machine technology”.

The judgment, issued at the end of 2025, upheld the initial ruling made by the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court, which VMI said had ruled in its favour. 

Accordingt to VMI, the Hefei court issued a partial first instance judgment in September 2023 stating that Safe-Run must “immediately stop infringing multiple groups of VMI’s technical secrets involved in the case” from the effective date of the judgment. 

The court also ordered Safe-Run to “transfer back” to VMI several patents which the Dutch company said “Safe-Run had wrongfully acquired, based on the technical secrets misappropriated from VMI.”

These included three utility model patents covering core components such as clamping, detection, and application mechanisms.

Safe-Run appealed the partial judgment at the time.

Following a two-year “comprehensive review” of all case documents and evidence, the Supreme People’s Court issued a second instance final judgment upholding “all rulings” of the first instance judgment, VMI said.

The court has now ordered Safe-Run to “cease manufacturing and selling” tire building machines that infringe VMI’s technical secrets involved in the case.

The injunction further requires Safe-Run to return to VMI all technical manuals, mechanical drawings and their electronic versions containing VMI’s technical secrets, and to “ensure that no paper or electronic copies are retained”.

The injunction also orders Safe-Run to “immediately stop” using VMI’s trade secrets “in any manner”, to stop disclosing them to any third party, and to stop permitting any third party to use them.

The remaining claims in the case, including claims for substantial monetary damages, are still pending before the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court at first instance.

Following the Supreme People’s Court’s final judgment affirming the infringement, VMI said it expects that judgment on the remaining damage claims will be issued in its favour shortly.

VMI concluded that the case, together with a series of patent ownership cases between VMI and Safe-Run, covers key technologies of tire building machines, ranging from specific equipment structures to manufacturing processes. (ERJ report)